chasing a dead bat
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AU] There was no point trying to catch Nancy Makuhari because she was already caught. Or so she thought.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Written for the Another Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts #68 – multichap whose chapters are exactly 1000 words long.

* * *

**chasing a dead bat  
**_Chapter 1_

**.**

**.**

'So you want a vampire.'

The speaker looked amused: a shadowed yellow face in the candlelight wrapped in dark. The clothing choice was perhaps coincidental, or poetic fate: black and a dark blue, melting into the backdrop of a night alleyway. Even her face and hands emerged and vanished as the flame waved to and fro.

In contrast, the one spoken to was white and black: an oval for a face with holes where the eyes were. They were eyes, but so dark a brown they appeared black and rimmed with heavy dark rings from sleeplessness or a macabre taste in makeup. And his clothes were a body suit of black rimmed with white: genteel white strips that highlighted his frame as a blur one could blink and miss in passing, but make out all too clearly at a standstill.

And the flickering flame just made him look like a badly dressed Halloween character, the woman in the shadow thought. Anyone else would have been afraid. Anyone else would have screamed and tried to run. Anyone else would have been lying, drained of blood, in that alley way: a payment for being lured into such dark and dangerous places at night on their own.

But she wasn't lured. She was the lure. And a vampire couldn't touch her.

The vampire didn't see that though. He only saw her amusement: the coy smile playing on her lips and her teasing words. And he saw a human who was all talk and no action…because he thought the supernatural like him were superior.

'I want a vampire.'

They were. Superior. Some were just better at pretending to be human.

She smiled. 'I don't want to be a vampire.' And she didn't she could, if she wanted to. Humans could be changed. Humans were shells that could be filled. The supernatural were already changed. Already set. Their fates decided.

'I want you.'

Her smile turned into a grin. Not feral. That was his job. His delusion. 'You won't get me.'

He jumped on her to prove her wrong – and passed right through her to hit the wall behind.

'Sorry.' She wasn't sorry. And she laughed as well. The candle had fallen when he'd lunged and now lay sulking on the cobbles. She faded into the black. He stood out, for his own vanity and that little white outline he'd chosen to decorate himself with. 'Nothing touches me that I don't want.'

**.**

She slipped out of the darkness like a shadow and into the pearl of light beneath a street lamp. To an outsider she looked simply like someone awaiting something – or perhaps someone staring at the starless sky and about to pull out a cigarette to light up or a cell phone. But the eyes who watched her from the alleyway were black slits and angry: they saw a slippery fish he couldn't catch.

He didn't understand. Didn't see how a human could become a shadow: completely transparent so he felt the cobble and stone and grime behind her but nothing of herself. Not the tightly woven clothes that covered her olive, foreign, skin. Not the skin itself: its tantalising peaks through buttons or sleeves or neck and face.

She was not human, he decided. He'd never heard of such creatures: creatures that could so easily be mistaken. But then again, he'd never cared. He did his work, his fulfilment, and that was it. It had never mattered, because though others existed, they did not get in his way.

Humans did try. Police running around looking for murderers and kidnappers. But they didn't get far. If they did, he just took is fill of blood from them and added to the count. A two for one. Nothing got away.

But she was calmly walking away now. Stepping out of the light. Into the shadows. Fading away.

And then she passed through a wall and vanished entirely. The precious seconds it took for him to scale it allowed her to slip away.

He scowled. And punched a wall.

His prey _never_ got away.

**.**

She looked behind. He'd gone. But she'd piqued his curiosity, she knew. She'd see him again. Or he'd find her. She saw too much of the world to never meet him again.

It was unfortunate, amusing – but now the melancholy settled in.

After all, she already belonged to someone else. Despite her dress, manner, tone...

Shells. Masks. Cloaks. That was what they were.

Locks. Keys. Doors.

She opened hers, and was greeted to the tomb of smells and vapours that hung. Heavy vapour: windows kept closed for too long, hot water run for too long.

She shut the door. Left the curtains drawn, the windows closed. 'I'm home,' she said.

'You're late,' was the voice that greets her back, heavy as the air around them and impatient.

She smiled sadly and fingered a switch. Considered toying with it. On, off, on, off. But didn't bother. Light, darkness – they made no difference in the end.

Just like it didn't matter what she wore or what she said or what she thought or who wanted her.

When she said nothing could touch her except what she wanted, it was a lie.

Or maybe it wasn't. And maybe "want" was so desperately gripping a thing that she could not escape.

She didn't gasp in pain as she fell. Nor did she phase: the coffee table was a hard edge and it slammed into her side and left a mark. It would bruise in the morning. It would be red now. But the colours didn't matter, in the slivers of light that snuck over and under curtains and through cracks.

She could see his outline as well, approaching her. Vanity. Arrogance. But this was the vanity and arrogance she was encroached in.

She raised an arm. Felt the rough stubble.

'I'm here now.'

'Good.' He withdrew and disappeared.

She laughed. It was a sad trap but she was there.

Outside, she was just good at pretending she wasn't.


	2. Chapter 2

**chasing a dead bat**  
_Chapter 2_

.

.

Some other poor girl got the bite that night, but that was fine. More undead wandering around meant more work for them, and more work meant more pay.

And the pay meant something else for all of them. Plain old money that didn't mean a thing when even the law couldn't touch them. A chance to drain themselves before they burst. Or even just a little excitement to colour their otherwise melancholic life. It was a bit of all three for her, though sometimes she wondered what she bothered saving herself up for. Some people preferred the high. Like a drug they rode on and off and they found just the right balance to save off the pain of the afterflow. A control that tethered on the cusp of control and that carnal desire that painted them as more animal, more monster, than human.

But what was a human? To have the same genetic mould? To look the same? Have the same mindset? How many humans weren't humans after all? And how many weren't humane? Morals, like ethics - pretty words but that was all they were. They got disillusioned in the end. Unless they were the lucky ones: the ones who died young or with their heads in the clouds and wasn't that presumptuous as well? Above the clouds was thin air that made them dizzy and the sun - too raw and burning the cover of their skin right off. A trait of vampires in old lore, in fairy tales that were twisted far beyond truth and comprehension and don't those people realise that any creature adapted to life on earth could bear the naked sun on naked skin above the clouds. No, they'd all burn and the proof was in Icarus that was no carpenter but the son of a craftsman whose father made him waxed wings.

Human was just another box to fall into. Or a romantic ideation.

She supposed it didn't really matter whether she was human or not.

.

The library was dark and musty. Full of shadows and cool. Not comforting, per say, or rather it was only as comfortable as a warrior could be with so many of their specialist weapons in reach. The books on the other hand were romantic drivel and it irked her, but there was nothing else to do with her eyes. Her ears were the spy. And so she read. Never to the end because their happy endings were unbearable to her. To the middle sometimes. Up till three quarters on occasion. Not past the first few chapters in the particularly disgustingly saccharine selections.

Didn't the library have anything other than romance novels?

There was a laugh behind her. Familiar: all too familiar because she was a spy and here was her target, ignorant little fly who'd come to the spider's web of her own volition. 'Not a fan?'

Her name-badge read "Readman." What an odd name to find in Japan. But the names didn't matter. The web mattered. A web with tangled strings and so complex at the end of it that no-one could read the truth of it at all. She was one of the undead and Miss Readman was of the Library and that meant her executioner but she was also a spy and of the Library herself. A complex web that hadn't been burned yet. And paper burned. Paper burned quite well while the shadows simply scampered and found a new place to hide.

There were undead who would laugh at their foolishness. They weren't like her who'd been half-blinded after forced, for so long, to live in the light.

.

Yomiko Readman was quite the boring girl. Large framed glasses. Straight black hair - aside from the mussle that seemed to come from carelessness rather than any style. And an outfit that looked like a school uniform. And that starry eyed look in her eyes as well - If she didn't know any better, she'd have said the girl was there simply because she was a book fanatic.

Though with the way she chatted about the books, she might be a boot fanatic anyway.

'So you don't like romance novels?' she asked finally, a little pink and out of breath.

Finally, Nancy thought. 'What gave it away?' she asked instead.

The girl laughed again: softly, as though she didn't mean to jest. 'You never finished the books,' she replied, holding the last one Nancy had replaced. And with some surprise, she realised the other had remembered each and every one. 'And you didn't even mark the pages.'

'Would've if they were interesting.' She shrugged carelessly. Why mark something if she never meant to go back to them?

'You're not carrying a bookmark,' the other scolded, pointing a few shelves down where there was a little box of them sitting. 'Unless you planned to go all that way?'

She shrugged. It wasn't far, but more importantly, it wasn't necessary. 'Why not bend the corners?'

The girl looked scandalised. Definitely a book fanatic.

.

There were more important things in the world than frivolous treasures. Yomiko Readman loved her books but she was sure that, if it came to it, those books would be sacrificed. After all, that girl was The Paper. She could craft any weapon or object with just a few sheets and an entire book was a hefty amount of ammunition. And if a mother could drown their own child to stay afloat just that little bit longer, Miss Readman could sacrifice her books for her life without a care.

And Nancy… Nancy did not even love the shadows that were her power, nor her unbeating heart, nor the tattoos that marked her skin. Words in a language only they knew and only they understood. The Library could read it, yes, but their translations only scratched the surface of their true meaning.

_This is our contract._  
_You belong to me._  
_You are mine._

There were no words in english or japanese or any other language to capture them in their entirety.


End file.
